Kusama - Infinity

A film about an artist whose sometimes immersive work looks great on the big screen.

Heather
Lenz has made a splendid film about the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
It's a documentary that has been described as conventional but in its
highly professional and unforced way Lenz's movie gets everything right
as it deals with the life and work of a woman whose career has been
extraordinary. Lenz tells the story in a manner that clearly reflects
her own rapport with Kusama's work. Indeed her desire to make this film
predates the recent acclaim that has resulted in Kusama becoming the
top-selling female artist alive today.

I
came to this film having very limited knowledge of Kusama and was
surprised therefore to learn of the scope of her work which ranges from
watercolours and drawings to sculptures, poems and installations. Not
everything is covered here (I gather that she has also written novels
but that does not come up in the film). However, we do gather a great
deal both from the artist herself (now 89 but still going strong in a
way that reminds one of the splendid Agnès Varda) and from the many
interviewees whose contributions are never allowed to outstay their
welcome.

Kusama
may count as an avant-garde artist having been part of the New York art
scene between 1958 and 1973 but on seeing this film her work, well
suited to being seen in this form, does not seem inaccessible and
belated popularity seems natural enough. She emerges from Kusama - Infinity
as a woman of remarkable strength despite a troubled childhood during
which she seems to have been traumatised by her father's infidelities
which she witnessed. Striking and innovative as she was during her
subsequent years in America, that was a period when no one would stage
a one-woman exhibition and she was sidelined even as more famous male
artists were influenced by her work. Her support of the anti-Vietnam
war demonstrators and her involvement in happenings often incorporating
nudity led to her being regarded back home in Japan as a scandalous
figure. When she returned to her own country, she went unappreciated
for two decades. These many travails brought on depression and she
attempted suicide more than once, while her sense of loneliness was all
the greater due to that childhood trauma having left her with a fear of
sex.

Her
later years have seen her as a voluntary inmate in a hospital near
Tokyo for the mentally ill, yet she has her own studio nearby and
continues to work daily undaunted. Her artistic vision reaching out to
the universe and embracing it, making recurrent use of polka dots and
net motifs and increasingly growing brighter in tone may well be born
of her problems and the need to overcome them rather than existing
despite them. What is beyond doubt is that this is an uplifting film.
Viewing it scene by scene one does not feel that one is being bowled
over by a masterpiece of cinema, yet in its own way Kusama - Infinity
is indeed masterly. As it draws to a close, one is taken aback to
realise that the film, lasting almost 80 minutes, is over because one
has been so absorbed: rarely does a film hold one so strongly that it
leaves one surprised when its time is up.